ABBEY’S MOAB DECADE
Ed Abbey died 15 years ago this spring, on March 14, 1989. It’s almost unfathomable to believe that a decade and a half has come and gone since Ed left. Or to realize that when I first met Abbey, on a cold dark December night in Moab, he was almost the same age then that I am now. Or that the world and the American West could be such a different place than it was, just a blink of the eye ago. I find myself wondering almost every day, as I see the stunning landscape of the Utah canyonlands increasingly trampled by a techno-gearheaded-adrenaline-riddled recreation economy, where solitude and reverence for the rocks play little or no part in the daily ‘adventure’ of thousands of ‘thrill-seekers’... what Ed would make of all this.
And all of us have, for better or worse, been lured by the temptation to speculate. My own ‘what would Abbey do?’ theory is quite brief: I believe he would have fled America and ended up in some outback corner of the Northern Territory, chasing gowannas for fun and peeling the bark off of gum trees to make sandals. (Just my little fantasy)
It is also remarkable, and a tribute to the greatness of the man, that so many of us still remember Ed daily and feel the need to share with others our memories of Abbey, no matter how small or insignificant those remembrances might be.
Elsewhere in this issue, writer Evan Cantor takes a poke at all the acquaintances of Ed Abbey who have, as he says, "put pen to paper at least once to etch their memories into stone." Evan concludes, "Having known Ed personally confers a kind of legitimacy that the author might, or might not, otherwise possess, a kind of western moral high ground."
I suppose there are a few Abbeyphiles that are motivated by less than honorable reasons to tell their "Me & Ed" stories, but I don’t think that’s why most of us like to tell tales about Cactus Ed. As we approach the 15th anniversary of his death, I simply find myself missing him and wishing he was still around. And wondering how he’d feel about the Brave New West of the 21st Century. And, more than anything, wanting these New Westerners to remember him and to understand what he stood for.
There is a reason why so many of us have personal stories to tell, when it comes to the Life & Times of Ed Abbey. It’s very simple–he was accessible. Incredibly accessible. Abbey may have lived inside his own head for much of his life, and he may have reluctantly realized that he had become a living icon of the American West, but Ed was still a man who enjoyed the company of ‘regular people,’ who spurned and hid from most autograph seekers (unless they were gorgeous co-eds) and who was a fairly easy man to find.
Well...that’s not completely true. My first effort to find Edward Abbey led me on a futile journey, all the way to the Arizona Strip, the once-forgotten wilderness of forested plateaus and red deserts, that lie between the Utah border and the North Rim. He was down there, somewhere, or so the jacket cover of The Monkey Wrench Gang proclaimed, living a hermit’s life, I assumed, working furiously on his proposed "fat masterpiece."
I was looking for a place called "Wolf Hole, Arizona," and after a dreadful dusty drive in my VW microbus, along miserable corrugated roads, I limped into Wolf Hole. But there was nothing there.
I don’t recall even so much as a building. Perhaps a corral. The sound of a squeaky windmill brings back a memory. But nothing else. No Abbey.
I had come bringing gifts; earlier that year, I implemented my own crude skills as a cartoonist to produce a semi-professionally drawn cartoon/line drawing of the ultimate fate of Glen Canyon Dam–a blown up, crumbling concrete plug. I thought he might get a chuckle out of it and was anxious to bring an offering to the man who saved me from becoming a Republican (It was that close...Desert Solitaire put me back on track.).
But the son of a bitch was nowhere to be found. I even looked for "signs"--- a discarded Schlitz beer can along the road perhaps...an uprooted billboard. But I could find no evidence of his passing. At the bottom of my Damn Drawing, I had scribbled "To Edward Abbey." Now I added, "Wherever you are," and gave up.
Fate, however, has a strange way of toying with our lives. I went back to Kanab, tried to get hired by the Kane County School System–after they got me to shave off my beard, the principal told me they weren’t all that interested. I left town fast, headed east, spent an afternoon at famed polygamist Alex Joseph’s Red Desert Café in Glen Canyon City, where I ogled all his gorgeous and brilliant wives (‘How does he DO that?’ I wondered). Tried to convince one of them to come with me, but got nowhere. I grumbled, "What has he got that I haven’t got?"And she just smiled and patted me on the head and said, "You’re very cute, honey...but that’s Alex Joseph!"
I left empty-handed. Drove back into Utah, over the dam, to Monument Valley and north to the Bears Ears, and finally to warm up on a particularly cold October morning, so many years ago, at the Natural Bridges National Monument Visitor Center, where I was greeted by a ranger named Dave Evans. In those days, post-Labor Day visitors were so infrequent that park rangers actually looked forward to seeing them. Very weird by today’s standards.
Evans, who fancied himself a cowboy but really grew up in the suburbs of DesMoines, took one look at my cold and shivering and disheveled form and said, "Partner, you look like you could use a cup of coffee."
The rest was incredibly good luck. Dave invited me to stay a while and offered his couch when the tent got too cold. I met and befriended the other rangers at Bridges and then heard about a crazed seasonal from the Maze, a legendary backcountry wanderer with three dogs and a penchant for hiking naked while on backcountry foot patrol. His name was Doug Treadway.
(Author’s Note: This may be boring the hell out of many of you and I seem to be taking the long way around the barn to tell this story, but I’m having a wonderful time with my memories and embellishing the ones that need to be spit-polished a bit, so if this is just so much sentimental fluff to some of you...well...humor me, will you?)
Treadway’s season was over by now (most seasonals were ‘terminated’ as the permanents liked to say, in late October). What I found additionally intriguing about Doug was learning that he and Ed played poker together. And then discovering that Abbey LIVED on the edge of town in Moab, on Spanish Valley Drive, for cryin’ out loud. In fact, he had lived in Moab for most of the 70s with his gorgeous teenaged wife Renee’ (who we all worshiped and adored).
I finally met Treadway and showed him the Damn Drawing; Doug assured me Ed would love it and suggested I come to Moab some Wednesday night, when they’d be playing poker, and give the cartoon to Abbey. A month later, I had my chance.
In just four weeks I had found ‘employment’ of sorts, unless being employed requires actually being paid. I picked up a volunteer position at Arches National Park and was given a warm apartment and three bucks day to run road patrols and man the visitor center desk. The Wednesday following my first day at work, Treadway called–he and Ed were playing poker that night at the ‘ranch house,’ (now the yupster Moab Springs Ranch); did I, he asked, want to stop by and give Abbey my Damn Drawing?
I was terrified. I was sure that I’d make a fool of myself—say something inane, or even worse, perhaps vomit all over him. I was that scared. My friend Conklin, a BLM ranger came along for moral support. We entered the ranch house through the back door, past a dark kitchen and into the living room. Just off the main room was a dimly lit bedroom that faced the highway. And standing in the center of the large window, silhouetted by the lights of traffic on the road, I saw the imposing figure of a man, staring through the glass at nothing in particular.
Treadway yelled, "Hey Ed! That guy’s here to give you the picture of the dam all blown up." I saw the man turn slowly and walk toward the door. Out of the darkness and into the light stepped Ed Abbey. He was exactly as I expected him to be, except more so.
He instantly put me at ease, praised my pitiful little doodle and thanked me more than twice. Ed invited Conklin and I to stay on and join the poker game, but I decided not to push my luck. We left soon after, with my dignity (such as it was) relatively intact.
If that had been my only contact with Ed Abbey, I could have died a happy man, but it wasn’t. Over the next few months I would see Ed around town, usually at the post office or the grocery. He always stopped to talk and I was always uncomfortable–always hoping I could hold up my end of the conversation. And that summer, when out of the ether came a letter from EP Dutton Publishers in New York, asking if I "would be interested in illustrating Edward Abbey’s forthcoming book of essays," I thought it was a bad joke being played on me by some of my seasonal cohorts. I drove back to the Devils Garden to prepare for work, still puzzled by the letter, when Abbey stuck his head inside my trailer and yelled, "Stiles, did you get a letter from New York?"
That was typical Abbey. He was always trying to help some struggling writer or artist get a break. He probably wrote more introductions to more ‘first books’ by friends and acquaintances than any author in modern history. Once, when I was first testing my scribbler legs, I asked Ed to read a story I’d written and to give me his honest assessment. He smiled/grimaced at me and said, "Well, I’ll read it and I’ll even try to help you get it published. But for God’s sake, don’t ask me if I think it’s any good."
He couldn’t stand to hurt someone’s feelings.
All of us who lived in Moab in the late 70s grew accustomed to the long lumbering image of Abbey making his way up Main Street, or to the numerous public hearings that once packed Star Hall on a regular basis (Moab truly ROCKED in the 70s and 80s). Sometimes, Ed would send Renee’ to the hearings to read his statements. "They won’t throw eggs at her," he’d chuckle and sometimes he delivered his brief polemics himself.
His communications headquarters was Tom Tom’s Foreign car shop on Spanish Valley Drive. Abbey lived a mile up the valley, but spurned a phone, and used TK’s shop phone to call his editors and friends alike. TK still remembers Ed hunkered down with a manuscript sprawled across the hood of VW Beetles in various states of decay, arguing with asshole editors in some faraway city about proposed changes and edits. "Godamnit! I’m not changing that paragraph!" Tom once heard Ed bellow into the phone.
Abbey frequented the Westerner Grill, always opted for the Texas toast and preferred the company of miners and cowboys and people who didn’t know who he was. Or even better–didn’t give a shit, even if they did.
And during his decade in Moab, Ed loved to stir up the town with his infrequent but well-placed letters to the editor of the local Times-Independent. Publisher Sam Taylor could be certain the angry mail from provoked readers would keep the last page full and overflowing for weeks.
Ed finally moved to Tucson in the late 70s. On the day of his planned departure, I drove out to say goodbye and knew he’d be packing and loading the U-Haul for the long drive south. I’d expected to find a small army of ‘movers,’ but there was Ed, alone, struggling to get a couch out the back door by himself. We spent most of the afternoon dragging furniture and boxes to the truck and even managed to wedge ten, 20 foot, 2 x 10 beams that he had long ago stored in his work shop. "One of these days," he grinned, "I’m still going to build that adobe houseboat."
That night we had dinner at the old Sundowner (now Buck’s Grill) and Ed grumbled when they brought our bottle of red wine in a bucket of ice. "Utah," he muttered. I told him that I was thinking of getting married and Ed was fully supportive. "Yes, Jim," he said earnestly, "I believe marriage is an honorable institution. I’ve been married four times, you know."
I nodded.
"I loved three of them dearly. But one of them... I was drunk."
Ed left the next morning. He returned many times, of course, and even spent a couple of summers in Moab during the last 80s. But is always seemed to me that he belonged here...it still does.
FOR 2005: RETRO ISSUE? OR A RETURN TO THE ‘LAME ALIEN SWIMSUIT ISSUE?
This should have been the 5th annual Retro Issue, but I wanted to spend some time remembering Abbey, so I got a bit ‘off schedule.’ The 1970s Retro edition is scheduled for next year. But then I thought: Who cares about the 70s? Maybe it’s time to bring back the ‘Lame Alien Swimsuit Issue,’ which was once a yearly tradition but which hasn’t seen the Zephyr light-of-day since 1999.
So if you miss the L.A.S issue, or if you don’t even remember it, but are curious, let me know. Maybe it’s time to get semi-nude and weird again...
